ABSTRACT
Videotape and analyse a short interaction using Norris’s concepts of ‘modal density’ and ‘identity elements’. How are different aspects of participants’ identities communicated in such modes as gesture, gaze, posture, dress and object handling? How do participants negotiate and co-construct their respective identities multi-modally? Norris, following Mead, makes a distinction between ‘I’ and ‘me’ identities, the ‘I’ identity corresponding to the way we construct ourselves in the ongoing fl ow of interaction, and the ‘me’ identity corresponding to those aspects of the ‘self ’ submerged in our memories and in the societal conventions that we follow. How is such a distinction useful for our understanding of the construction of identity in interaction? What kinds of evidence from discourse (spoken, written or multimodal) can help us to understand how these two aspects of identity interact? One of the main points made by Jewitt and Jones in their chapter is that the subtle, non-verbal ways teachers communicate their attitudes towards their students can have an important impact on teaching and learning. The same can be said for the ways managers interact with their employees. Observe an educational or workplace situation and analyse how people in different positions of power use various modes to communicate such things as approval and disapproval, agreement and disagreement, using the methods and principles outlined by Jewitt and Jones. Jewitt and Jones suggest that larger issues of educational policy manifest as concrete local practices in classrooms through such things as teacher and student positioning, object handling and the architecture of the classroom. Compare her points to those made by Lin in Chapter 5. In what ways might teachers and students redesign their interactions to make them more equitable and pedagogically effective?
